Qualities Of A Good Designer V1.0

What behaviors, processes and opinions predictably lead to good design?

What makes a designer good? This is a question designers should continually ask themselves throughout their careers, no matter which discipline(s) of design they practice. How the question can be answered and returned to can be designed itself. For me, two important parts of engaging with this question include: first, which behaviors and attitudes do I observe in others or practice myself that create the conditions for great design? and second, which new insights are either challenging or adding to those previous ideas as I move forward? Answering the question should be a dynamic, evolving process.

There is a big difference between asking what makes a designer good? and what makes a designer good in 2020?. The latter question is important, but can remain for others to bat around. As more of a meditative personal practice, I’m interested in the general and more fundamental qualities of good design that I can identify now, and continue to reflect on yearly, rather than explore those which have evolved suddenly and are perhaps due for early extinction.

For too long, humans have been oddly reassured by definitive lists—as though their structure itself points to a form of truth—in particular the format of decalogues. I’m suspicious of these. Such lists always become victims of their formats, both limited by overvaluing a superficial number and by the illusion of permanence that producing a static list inevitably produces. Through this list, I’m not interested in scribing any 10 whatevers in stone.

Dieter Rams’s famous Ten Principles of Good Design brought clarity and insight to the process of both producing and assessing design by its various merits. I would be fascinated to know more about his intimate process wrestling with these topics that he ultimately committed to. Were there any that were close but didn’t make the cut? Surely those would be highly valuable for designers to consider, too. And did he ever consider amending or ratifying the list? Perhaps changing the list would violate the principles, whether he consciously considered it or not. The elegance of the list can be thought of as a designed product, and isn’t a stretch to consider as an outcome of the principles itself. I’m sure I’m not the first to observe or remark this. For someone who famously wouldn’t consider changes to the finishes he originally specified for his products, I’m curious how he would engage with any proposed change to the content or format of the Principles, whether the change was self-originated or from some other source. I could imagine Dieter Rams feeling that an amendment or addition to his principles would be comparable to a dimension change or unnecessary feature addition to a product he previously designed. Dieter always designed with a period at the end. Period. If there were, for instance, eleven principles of equal value he would not have under any circumstance published those full eleven. Doing so would have been comparable to designing a five-legged chair, an abomination.

The qualities that I currently believe contribute to being a good designer:

1. Assuming anything is interesting.

What it is: Assuming anything is interesting is taking the attitude and a priori assumption that any entity, phenomenon, problem or opportunity is incredibly intriguing and worthy of a designer’s examination and attention: the way a crack forms in concrete setting; how water parts in a boat’s wake; the feeling someone has in line waiting to board a flight; the shape of a chair’s shadows overlapping from being cast from two light sources; the habits of pigeons on train platforms.

What it isn’t: Assuming anything is interesting does not mean the designer should rest with the insights or on the problem definitions of others. Assuming that someone’s feelings about having to wait in line to board a flight are necessarily negative is a conclusion other designers may have come to, but that doesn’t ensure it is always correct, or correct in a particular context. By taking the approach that the phenomenon is interesting, the designer may find that there exists an opportunity to prolong the passenger’s wait time because the moment of transition from scurrying through the airport to the gate produced adrenaline and activated their sympathetic nervous system, and that the additional time in line unexpectedly assists them in both identifying their seat and more calmly putting their bags away cooperatively as an ephemeral community once boarded. What was assumed to be a problem could be orchestrated as a solution to a different challenge for the designer who finds it all fascinating.

2. Identifying the horizon of a horizon.

What it is: Identifying the horizon of a horizon is the ability to glimpse the hazy areas hardly visible by examining a subject’s perceivable boundaries. These are often speculative futures, shrouded by the limits of a designer’s imagination, social conventions, or known and unknown biases for systematic preferences—particularly those with immediate personal or group benefits. It isn’t known whether or not companies in the future will regard the human workforce as a liability or whether they will still employ them. Questioning what exactly humans will then do in such a scenario isn’t the goal of surveying this horizon. Linger, observe, and dwell uncomfortably in the view.

What it isn’t: Identifying the horizon of a horizon shouldn’t replace, or be confused by, the disciplines of design futures, trend forecasting or scenario planning. The former is a meditative practice, the latter are each billable deliverables.

3. Complexity discernment.

What it is: Complexity discernment encourages the designer to take an active role in deciding which scale of complexity the designer should or can productively address. Emerging disciplines of design, such as transition design, require the designer to contextualize what are understood as problem ecologies. While a worthwhile venture, the designer or team of designers must have a point of view about where the best use of their time and investment ultimately is. Additionally, complexity discernment occurs at the synthesis phase, whereas complexity definition occurs at the analysis phase. Because all problems cannot be solved for, the designer’s selection process of which problems to engage with, and at what scale, is critical. Discernment of which problem(s) to engage with comes with experience and careful consideration of the context.

What it isn’t: Complexity discernment is not engaging in data analysis bias. Complexity discernment should be practiced in qualitative design research during the synthesis phase, and not in quantitative research where different methodologies guide the process to produce an outcome with validity.

4. Approaching society perpendicularly.

What it is: Approaching society perpendicularly encourages the designer to conduct the design process as though they couldn’t be users of the product or service, members of the group, society, culture, or possibly even the species for whom he or she is designing. This should be considered as a thought experiment to free the designer from the currents of cultural and personal identity they may bring to the design process which may, consciously or unconsciously, bias the process or limit the final outcome.

What it isn’t: Approaching society perpendicularly isn’t contrarianism, or a rejection of empathy-based design.

5. The arrogance to create someone else’s experience.

What it is: The arrogance to create someone else’s experience is a position the designer is thrust into by the nature of design. The comfortability and appropriateness, however, of that position are increasingly an issue for the academic and practicing design community to consider. Whatever the conclusions of those assessments, the designer is responsible for the experience others will ultimately have whether it is through using a bluetooth speaker or voting. An increasing responsibility lies with designing equitable and inclusive experiences for a wide range of human ability. However, the designer must retain a nature of confident arrogance as a practitioner and specialist of their discipline. Some solutions might be highly controversial, even hated at first, however correct. Consider the case of Instagrm’s rebrand: What was at first an offensive change has become as accepted as air. Better air, even.

What it isn’t: The arrogance to create someone else’s experience is likely not stable ground for the design student or the early-career practitioner. Simply by striving for a seat at the studio table, they’ve have taken the first step in becoming a voice in this conversation, and are well on their way to developing the balanced arrogance needed to contribute to an improved world.

6. Pursuing what something aught to be.

What it is: Pursuing what something aught to be is committing to an ideal outcome once that outcome is understood. It likely will not be possible under the current circumstances and with the current resources available to the designer. It must still be achieved, so the question becomes how? Don’t fret for designers in this position, envy them.

What it isn’t: Pursuing what something aught to be is not early concept attachment. Concepts articulate the many possibilities of what aught to be. What aught cannot be manifest through a single concept.

7. Being faithful to your perceptions.

What it is: Being faithful to your perceptions is perhaps the bedrock skill a designer can possess. Perceptions are different from observations; they are the designer’s conclusions of their observations—their meaning. These may be the conclusions of traditional ethnographic observations, but, more broadly, they are the subtle conclusions which are difficult to materialize into thought, much less into the written word, specifically because they are original. Developing the ability to form these perceptions is often in active conflict with the abundant variety of clichés, typologies, and trends design is saturated in.

What it isn’t: Being faithful to your perceptions does not mean accepting observations at initial face value. Conclusions from observations should be arrived at from a variety of confirming experiences; ones which form the foundation for the eventual generation of more mature perceptions.

8. Using language as a design tool.

What it is: Using language as a design tool is a strategy for arriving at ideas and conclusions for which no other method could produce. Semantic and lexical design frameworks have been in use for some time now, particularly in the discipline of service design and in the practice of design research. But the potential of language as a design tool is broader—an insight immediately familiar to anyone who is bilingual. Language determines the ideas that one’s mind is capable of creating. Familiarity with ideas in other languages widens the designer’s mind to the potential of possible connections, insights and resulting concepts. Personally, I keep a journal documenting foreign words I come across which cannot be feasibly translated into English.

What it isn’t: Using language as a design tool isn’t limited to only one method or framework. There likely exists an untapped well of frameworks and methods using language for design yet to be discovered.

9. Identifying the issues of now.

What it is: Identifying the issues of now is the designer’s ability to identify meaningful uses of their efforts in relation to the space and time and culture he or she occupies. The adage of fighting the last war is a pitfall many designers find themselves engaged in, often unknowingly. Fixing one’s gaze on the horizon and being perceptive to changes in the cultural climate reduces the risk of engaging in futile design skirmishes or the assault of hills previously claimed.

What it isn’t: Identifying the issues of now is not immediately fashionable, however market and industry relevancy should not be too far behind. Be sure to have moved on by the time other designers arrive where you are. Du jour design—the mass observance and adoption of a specific variety of design solutions across multiple segments or industries (and usually those in competition)—is typically a sign that irrelevancy of these solutions is soon to follow.

10. Futurebooking and pastbooking.

What it is: Futurebooking and pastbooking is a four-dimensional way of sketchbooking. I learned of this technique from the personal process designer Ross Lovegrove has developed toward his sketchbooks. First, beginning with what I call futurebooking, the designer reflects on future possibilities, ideas, absurdities and ambitions. Second, the designer dwells with these futurebooks—out and in the open like wildlife in their studio, always available at hand. When he or she returns to page through of these (now past) futurebooks, what I call pastbooking occurs. This is the act of being in the opportune time and place and with the possible right market conditions to manifest this documented material. As if bending the fabric of time, the designer’s future self arrives at what his or her present self received from what his or her past self produced.

What it isn’t: Futurebooking and pastbooking are not general sketching. They require the designer to utilize space and time purposefully as a tool in their personal design process. They also should not take the place of general sketching used in product design, which has its foundation firmly in the communication of ideas to internal and external stakeholders. Time constraints produced by market needs will likely limit the application and relevancy of futurebooking and pastbooking.

11. Allowing form to form.

What it is: Allowing form to form is the act of producing structures determined by the conclusions of the process, and not through adherence to presuppositions of form. Examples of design that exemplify allowing form to form include the Herman Miller’s Aeron chair, Kohler’s Karbon water faucet (sadly discontinued), Motorola’s line of walkie-talkies specifically for firefighters, and the architecture of Bjarke Ingels. The principle of allowing form to form also indirectly assaults the lingering paradigms of general numerology. There is no inherent value in having an odd or even number of something. Forms like these are superstitious.

What it isn’t: Allowing form to form isn’t sacrificing elegance or sidestepping simplicity. Often, when form is truly allowed to manifest, it has the latent potential to redefine standards of beauty.